BLOGGE(RED) Day 42

Day 1 of Kili today. After breakfast we met by the Kessy car and were driven to Machame gate (elevation 1800m) where we were given water, lunchbox, and gave our extra bags to the porters to carry. Its amazing as I thought they would wear our backpacks.. But no... They have their own backpacks! Our gear is put into guni sacks and our backpacks put into those sacks with our mountain gear. The porters then put this huge sack of stuff on their heads in addition to their own already large backpacks of their own stuff. Then they run up the mountain with it. It truly is incredible.

Met some annoying Americans who kept talking to us. The guy's shirt had a hole in it. Weirdo. We began the climb with our backpacks filled with water and our walking sticks... And off we went "pole pole" (meaning slowly in swahili). The guide sang us the Kilimanjaro song and we were on our way. It was a very nice trek today, slowly and comfortably, through the rainforest. Very beautiful views of the flora. This is the Kilimanjaro flower.

It rained lightly once and we wore our ponchos but it got too hot. I brought the pulse oximeter and everyone loved it, pretty much at every stop everyone would have a go and see what their O2 saturations were! Didn't drop too low today as we hadn't gone too high.

Camped at Machame hut that night. 3000m. Oxygen saturations 94%. A pleasant end to the first day. The food was good, can't remember what it was though (I'm writing this about a week after).